Categories: Lifestyle

4 Tips For Buying Jewelry Online

In today’s digital world, you can buy almost anything online from the comfort of your own home. This includes everything from electronics to jewelry. However, you need to be cautious when buying large ticket items. It is important not only to get a good deal but to protect your investment and your personal information.

So what are some things you need to do when you are shopping for jewelry online? Here are 4 important tips.

IMAGE: PEXELS

Look At The Site Reputation

When you are looking at an online jewelry site, you need to evaluate the reputation of the site itself. Is it a known brand? Read reviews of both the products they sell and the site itself. Make sure that the site has the proper security.

For instance, retail sites are supposed to use SSL certificates, so they can protect any data you provide them. The checkout process should be secure, and they should be open with how and when they will use any information you provide them, including your email address.

The checkout process should also provide you with options like Apple Pay and other options that don’t even share your credit card information with the site itself, so even if they get hacked your data is protected.

If anything about the site looks or feels off, search and make your purchase elsewhere.

Think About Price Of The Jewelry

One of the problems that sometimes occurs online is that people will shop, see an original price and a huge discount, and won’t do any comparison shopping to see if they are actually getting a good deal.

Remember, one of the reasons jewelry stores often have large discount sales is the markup and margin they have. Online stores don’t have the costs associated with brick and mortar brand name stores in the mall, so the discounts should be deeper.

Don’t buy jewelry without doing some comparative shopping, and be sure you are looking at the same things: the same carat gems, the same type of gold or setting material, or at least a close equivalent.

Quality affects the price of any item, and a more expensive ring may actually be a better one rather than a bad deal. Don’t shop simply for the cheapest price, or you will probably be disappointed by what you get.

Too Good To Be True Probably Is

Along the lines of considering price and the site reputation, while there are some old adages you can ignore, some you should not. In the case of “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is” there is no place this is proven more often than on the internet.

This is another reason it is important to comparison shop. If you know what a 14K gold ring with a simple ¼ carat diamond solitaire costs on an average site, and another site offers the same thing for less than 25% of the price other sites do, there is probably something wrong there.

The deal may be that only certain sizes are available, or that the quality is low, or it could be an outright scam, and the ring could not be at all what you are looking for. The gold could be less than the quality advertised, and the diamond could be fake. Sometimes sites appear and disappear virtually overnight, and you have no recourse for a return or exchange.

Read The Fine Print

Many online sites have great return, guarantee, and exchange policies, but they do have limitations, and those are in the fine print. If you have had your ring engraved, it may not be something you can return. You also want to make sure the size of the ring is right: resizing may cost more than you expect even if you have it done locally and may take longer if you have to send it back to the site you purchased it from.

They key is to read this fine print and make sure that when you agree to the terms and conditions you know what they are. Buying jewelry online can save you a lot of money, but you need to be careful. Follow these four tips to make sure you are getting a good deal.

If you are interested in even more jewelry-related articles and information from us here at Bit Rebels then we have a lot to choose from.